They just don't get it, don't they?

gr82bart

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thebanana

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So far they haven't found a way to add dust to the photos yet

(there was a url link here which no longer exists)
 

Akki14

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uhh wow. i'd love to fiddle around with an image for half an hour in some programme instead of just going *click* with my holga.


(yes that's being sarcastic)
 

Lopaka

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I'm waiting for the tool that adds simulated streaks from uneven development.:rolleyes:

Bob
 

sly

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Oh yeah, I'm sold!! So much more fun to spend 15 minutes in photoshop than to get out and take pictures! Sly
 

walter23

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sly said:
Oh yeah, I'm sold!! So much more fun to spend 15 minutes in photoshop than to get out and take pictures! Sly
Click to expand...

Or an hour and a half in the darkroom.

Look, we all feel threatened by digital photography because frankly we're afraid we'll see more films and chemicals disappear as a consequence of it. This doesn't invalidate it as a medium. It's a different way of working. There's nothing intrinsically wrong with it (except for the obvious fact that it's got no soul and it cheapens all of your photography and teaches new photographers to be memory-card filling automatons who shoot 1000 images in an outing and then reduce photography to sorting through the 99.9% crap to get the two or three keepers ).

There's just nothing good that can come out of these knee-jerk reactions to digital photographic techinques though. I think it's obvious looking at that guy's results that it's nothing like an actual crappy film camera. But it is what it is, and if it helps someone brilliantly express their creative impulses then the world is better off for it.
 

Flotsam

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I have seen much better authentic Holga pictures in the APUG gallery.
 

Sean

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"Digital Camera - The magazine for today's photographer"

biting my tongue....
 

nicolai

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walter23 said:
I think it's obvious looking at that guy's results that it's nothing like an actual crappy film camera.
Click to expand...

This is my sole objection: it utterly fails at its stated goal of making non-Holga pictures look like Holga pictures. (And the 120 = 120mm thing just irritates me.)


walter23 said:
But it is what it is, and if it helps someone brilliantly express their creative impulses then the world is better off for it.
Click to expand...

Right on.
 

bjorke

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gr82bart said:
Oiy. http://www.dcmag.co.uk/How_to_create_toy_camera_effects.YUBz-Hdo39cnPg.html
Hmmm ... I don't recall ever dreaming about this stuff for my Holga. :rolleyes:

Regards, Art.
Click to expand...

In Michael Grecco's first book, he wrote a fair bit about loving the the look of a Holga/Diana (which he was using for personal work) BUT he also had to deliver dependably on time and on budget. So he shot with a 'blad and did the rest in the darkroom. It ended up being a "signature" style of image that clients like "Entertainment Weekly" requested again and again.

Personally, I haven't seen much original toy camera exploration since Rexroth's IOWA. YMMV. It's a "look," a fixed mannerism. Exactly what computers excel at.
 

Removed Account

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Not to bash digital photography, but it DOES seem to be a whole lot of work that would be saved by just using a d*mn Holga. It always amuses me at my job in a 1 hour lab how people can get better pictures from a quality (relatively speaking) disposable camera than a low-end digicam.

- Justin
 

Bob F.

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Nope, I don't feel in the slightest bit "threatened" by digital. People can do as they please and the best of luck to them. The point is: "why bother"?

Why try to make your images look like they were made by a different process? A major point of shooting a toy camera is the fun, no-fuss and unpredictable results from the artefacts that appear spontaneously due to the nature of the equipment. You are not supposed to PLAN spontaneity, and if you do, you will fail.

Do people printing in Pt/Pd try to make their prints look like silver? Do people creating cyanotypes bemoan the blue colour of their prints (and yes, I've seen the photoshop tips on how to make your digi-images "look like cyanotypes")?

No. It's just silly. If you want to produce pt/pd prints, learn the process; if you want cyanotypes, learn the process; if you want to make bromoils, learn how to make bromoils; if you want toy camera prints, use a toy camera and if you want digiprints, use a digicam. That's the FUN of it all!

Why spend time making a 3rd-rate pastiche of something else? It's the difference between owning original studio pottery and a cheap reproduction off the local hardware store's shelves. A fake is a fake. Why waste valuable time making fakes?

Makes no sense to me.

Cheers, Bob.
 

pentaxuser

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There's not much you cannot do. Earlier this year AP carried another of its "devoted to B&W" sections. That carried Daguerrotypes and other alternative processes. Don't get too excited it was all in PS. In fact there wasn't even a mention of analogue, silver gelatin, film, darkroom etc. The last AP mag that seemed to be devoted to B&W had been less than 3 years previously. It had split grade printing; an article on liquid emulsion etc. All sunk without trace in less than 3 years and replaced by PS.

Nothing's impossible with PS except maybe resurrecting Fox Talbot himself from the grave. Now had he been called Christopher Lee, well who knows? Sorry joke only available to UK devotees of 1960s British Hammer Horror films.

pentaxuser
 

nicolai

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bjorke said:
It's a "look," a fixed mannerism. Exactly what computers excel at.
Click to expand...

I have yet to see a digital process that can replicate the look of a Diana's warbly focus, what happens when the picture starts to fall apart at the edges of the image circle, or the look of slight defocus through these lenses. Vignetting isn't the whole story.

And there are rather startling variations between different copies of the same model toy cameras in my experience (just like hand-polished brass lenses).
 

Kvistgaard

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Bob F. said:
Why spend time making a 3rd-rate pastiche of something else? It's the difference between owning original studio pottery and a cheap reproduction off the local hardware store's shelves. A fake is a fake. Why waste valuable time making fakes?
Click to expand...

- good point, and equally applicable to the idea of adding film-like grain or full-frame negative print borders to a digital image in PS. If it isn't an analogue photograph, don't attemp to make it look like one. (I dislike veneer in furniture making for the same reason: if it is not wood, don't try to make it look like it. Be honest and humble about what you do - nothing wrong with using MDF, just don't try to dress it up like a nobler material!)
 

Andy K

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Fake analogue pictures are as pointless as vegetarian sausages.
 
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